Thanks to social media, gone are the days when your biggest concern was that your mom would pull out the photo albums when you brought a ‘special’ friend home.

Now, from the day that you’re born, your baby pics, toddler pics, and everything that follows is being posted on social media for all to see.

Correction – this actually starts before you’re born with those creepy sonogram pics.

You know, the ones where the baby is scanned in 3D, which makes it look like something out of House of Wax?

Yeah, those. Please stop posting those. I haven’t slept in weeks.

Moving on.

What parents don’t realise is that their kids probably don’t want their pics all over the internet. Here’s Fast Company with the tale of a 14-year-old who wasn’t allowed to use social media until she turned 13, then quit social media when she discovered her parents’ photo gallery.

That’s when I realized that while this might have been the first time I was allowed on social media, it was far from the first time my photos and stories had appeared online. When I saw the pictures that she had been posting on Facebook for years, I felt utterly embarrassed, and deeply betrayed.

There, for anyone to see on her public Facebook account, were all of the embarrassing moments from my childhood: The letter I wrote to the tooth fairy when I was five years old, pictures of me crying when I was a toddler, and even vacation pictures of me when I was 12 and 13 that I had no knowledge of. It seemed that my entire life was documented on her Facebook account, and for 13 years, I had no idea.

Think about it – what if you discovered that someone had been documenting your life, without your knowledge or permission, online for years. You’d be pretty freaked out. The fact that it’s her mom doesn’t make it any better.

The moral of the story here is think before posting everything your kid does on the internet, or at least ask their consent.

I know it comes from a good place, and you just want to share how lovely and clever little *insert name* is, but they might not like having their entire lives play out on social media.

[source:fastcompany]